Doing Ethnographic Research

Fieldwork Settings

There is nothing quite so exciting and daunting as taking your first steps into the field as an ethnographic researcher. This collection of essays features the contributions of a wide range of researchers who consider the key research problems in their given field site and how they were managed. The selections give a novice researcher a sense of the problems, uncertainties, and apprehensions that are part of the research act, as well as the benefit of the experiences that these researchers share in dealing with those issues. Editor Scott Grills presents a collection that takes the reader through the natural history of the research act from establishing oneself in the fieldwork setting to presentation and representation issues. Doing Ethnographic Research is ideally suited for use in a research methods class. As an "ethnography of ethnography," it provides a behind-the-scenes glimpse into fieldwork and simultaneously shows students how research done in substantive areas quite distant from their own can be powerfully relevant and revealing.